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Judge gives Oxford drug addict suspended jail sentence for theft

A JUDGE has given a burglar a suspended prison sentence after he stole a TV and laptop from a flat.

Louie Withers pleaded guilty to burgling a flat in Priory Road, Oxford, on February 22 this year.

Cathy Olliver, prosecuting, told Oxford Crown Court on Friday he went to the house the day before the offence and asked the man who lived there – who was an “acquaintance” – if he could stay there.

The man refused as he was going away on the Saturday night, but when he returned on the Sunday discovered his laptop and TV had been stolen.

Lucy Tapper, defending, said Withers, 25, of Cuddesdon Way, had been brought up in a family where drugs were regularly dealt and taken.

She said: “Regrettably from a very young age he was in a drug-using and drug-selling environment in his own family.

“He describes a background of using, and being sent out to sell, class A drugs from the age of 12. It is unsurprising that he found himself before the court at just 14 and is battling against it still now at the young age of 25.”

Miss Tapper said he was unlikely to receive the support he needed to come off drugs in prison.

She said his grandmother had died while he was in custody and his other grandmother was seriously ill with cancer.

Sentencing him, Judge Patrick Eccles said: “You have a long history with drugs and have the misfortune of drug abuse, crime and prison being a part of your daily life.”

Judge Eccles said he would have imposed a further three months in custody, on top of the four months which he has already served, but said: “There isn’t a great deal of public interest in keeping you in prison for the next three months without anybody to look after you.”

He was given a 15-month jail term, suspended for 18 months, with a supervision order for 12 months and a drug rehabilitation requirement for nine months.